Editor's Note: The following commentary is by Louis F.
Benson from Studies Of Familiar Hymns, First Series
(Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1924). At the end of his commentary, Rev.
Benson offers "some points for discussion." Please consider these
questions as those posed for your own consideration, or for discussion with
friends or members of your congregation. Due to lengthy illness, I regret that I am not
able to respond to your thoughts or questions.

Right: Phillips Brooks at age 22.

The Text of the Hymn

1. O little town of
Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie;
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by:
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.

2. For Christ is born
of Mary;
And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth;
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace to men on earth.

3. How silently, how
silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

4. O holy Child of
Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born in us to-day.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.

Rev. Phillips Brooks,
1868

Note [from Rev.
Benson]: Four verses of the five as originally written (see under “Some
Points for Discussion"). This text agrees with the author's manuscript. The text issued by
Bishop Brooks' publishers in an “illuminated” style was inaccurate.

Note From Editor: Rev. Benson is referring to
Christmas Songs and Easter Carols published by E. P. Dutton & Co. in 1903.
In that version there was a different second verse beginning "O morning stars,
together." The "omitted verse" begins "Where children
pure and happy." It is found below.

The Story of the Hymn

It was the sight of
Bethlehem itself, one feels very sure, that gave Phillips Brooks the impulse to
write this hymn. He was then rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, in
Philadelphia, and had spent a year’s vacation traveling in Europe and the East.
“After an early dinner, we took our horses and rode to Bethlehem,” so he wrote
home in Christmas week of 1865. “It was only about two hours when we came to the
town, situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its
terraced gardens. It is a good-looking town, better built than any other we have
seen in Palestine. . . . Before dark, we rode out of town to the field where
they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave
in it (all the Holy Places are caves here), in which, strangely enough, they put
the shepherds. The story is absurd, but somewhere in those fields we rode
through the shepherds must have been. . . . As we passed, the shepherds were
still “keeping watch over their flocks or leading them home to fold.” Mr. Brooks
returned in September, 1866, and it must have been while meditating at home over
what he had seen that the carol took shape in his mind. The late Dr. Arthur
Brooks assured the writer that it was not written until 1868.

In the programme of
the Christmas service of the Sunday-school of the Church of the Holy Trinity in
that year the carol was first printed, and it was sung to the music written for
it by Mr. Lewis H. Redner.

Its history as a hymn
begins then, and a considerable share of the credit for its popularity must be
given to Mr. Redner, at that time organist of the church, superintendent of its
mission, and teacher in the church school. The place of the carol in the books
is now established, and new tunes have been and will be written for it. But it
is safe to say that Mr. Redner’s music was what carried the carol into notice
and popularity. If the tune to which it was sung at that service had been
unsuccessful, it is unlikely that the carol would have been reprinted or heard
again, at least during Bishop Brooks’s life.

With this view of the
case it seemed to the present writer well worth while that an account, as
circumstantial as possible, of the genesis of hymn and tune should be secured
from the one man living who knows it. And standing over Mr. Redner in his Walnut
Street office in Philadelphia one winter afternoon, waving aside the modest
protests and gently prodding the reluctance of that genial composer, he was
happy in obtaining the following written statement of the circumstances:

“As
Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple
little carol for the Christmas Sunday-school service, and he asked me to write
the tune to it. The simple music was written in great haste and under great
pressure. We were to practice it on the following Sunday. Mr. Brooks came to me
on Friday, and said, ‘Redner, have you ground out that music yet to “O Little
Town of Bethlehem”?’ I replied, ‘No,’ but that he should have it by Sunday. On
the Saturday night previous my brain was all confused about the tune. I thought
more about my Sunday-school lesson than I did about the music. But I was roused
from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and
seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now
have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony.
Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live
beyond that Christmas of 1868.

“My recollection is
that Richard McCauley, who then had a bookstore on Chestnut Street west of
Thirteenth Street, printed it on leaflets for sale. Rev. Dr. Huntington, rector
of All Saints’ Church, Worcester, Mass., asked permission to print it in his
Sunday-school hymn and tune book, called The Church Porch, and it was he
who christened the music ‘Saint Louis.’”

The date of Dr.
Huntington’s book, 1874, does not imply a very prompt recognition of the merits
of the carol even as available for use in the Sunday-school. Nor does its
appearance in that book imply that the carol passed at that date into general
use in Sunday-schools. But gradually it became familiar in those connected with
the Protestant Episcopal Church. By the year 1890 it had begun to make its
appearance in hymnals intended for use in church worship. In 1892 (some
twenty-four years after its first appearance) Bishop Brooks’s carol was given a
place as a church hymn in the official hymnal of his own denomination. This
occasioned the composition of new tunes to its words for rival musical editions
of that book, and also drew attention afresh to the earlier tune of Mr. Redner.
It seems, too, to have settled the status of the hymn, recent editors being as
reluctant to omit the hymn as their predecessors had been to recognize it.

There is, however,
nothing unusual or surprising in this delay in admitting the carol into the
church hymnals. Almost all hymns undergo such a period of probation before they
attain recognition; and it is for the best interests of hymnody that they
should. In this particular case there was an especial reason for delay. There
had to be a certain change in the standards by which hymns are judged before a
carol such as this could be esteemed suitable for church use. In 1868, it is
likely, not even its author would have seriously considered it in such a
connection.

The Author of the Hymn

Phillips Brooks was
born in Boston, December 13th, 1835. He came of a long line of Puritan
ancestors, many of whom had been Congregational clergymen. His parents became
connected with the Episcopal Church, and he was reared in the strict ways of the
Evangelical wing of that Church. He had the typical Boston education, the Latin
School and then Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1855. He was then for a
few months a teacher in the Latin School, but there he had the humiliating
experience of complete failure. He soon decided to enter the ministry, and
studied at Alexandria Seminary, in Virginia. In 1859 he became rector of a small
church in Philadelphia. Here his sermons attracted much attention, and in 1861
he was called to be rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, in the same city.

In that position he
remained until 1869, when his own leanings toward his native town and the
urgency of repeated calls from there led him to accept the rectorship of Trinity
Church, Boston. The congregation built for him the great church in the Back Bay,
and there he exercised that wonderful ministry with which we all are familiar.
In 1891 he was elected bishop of his Church in Massachusetts, and after some
controversy, occasioned by his broad views in church matters, his election was
confirmed and he was consecrated. But this position he was not to fill for long.
The strain of the great work he had been doing had undermined even his giant
strength, and after a short sickness he passed away on January 23rd, 1893 [at
age 58 years].

Left: Phillips Brooks at age
50.

Bishop Brooks was the
most famous preacher and the most widely-loved clergyman of his time. The shock
of his death was felt in every branch of the Church throughout the land, for
while many disagreed with his opinions, none who knew him in his work could
withhold their admiration. The word that seems best to describe him is “great.”
- He was great in his physical proportions, great in the endowments of genius,
great in the power to work, extraordinarily great in his personal influence over
men, greatest of all in the moral elevation of his character and his
ever-deepening spirit of consecration to Christ’s service.

The connection of one
so great with hymnody as the writer of a few simple carols intended for children
seems at first a little incongruous. But after reading his biography, and
understanding the man’s nature, one feels rather that nothing he ever did was
more characteristic of him. It now appears that verse-writing was even a regular
habit with him, probably as a relief to feelings his intensely reserved nature
could express in no other way. And he not only loved children dearly, but liked
to be their comrade and to get down on the nursery floor and romp with them. His
own heart was like a child’s, and he wrote Christmas and Easter carols because
he entered into those festivals with a child’s enthusiasm and joy.

But there is another
point of connection between Bishop Brooks and hymnody which must not be passed
over. Its disclosure was to many one of the surprises of that wonderful
biography of his friend by Dr. Allen. And that connection is in the fact that
his own mind and heart were stored with hymns, to such an extent and in such a
way that they were one of the real influences of his life.

In one of the letters
“the father regrets that Phillips “could not have been with the family on the
last Sunday evening when the boys recited hymns. This was a beautiful custom,
which called from each one of the children the learning of a new hymn every
Sunday, and its recital before the assembled family. In a little book, carefully
kept by the father, there was a record of the hymns each child had learned,
beginning with William, who had the advantage of age, and had learned the
greatest number, followed by Phillips, who came next, and the record tapering
down until John is reached, with a comparatively small number at his disposal.
Most of them were from the old edition of the Prayer Book, then bound up with a
metrical selection of Psalms and a collection of two hundred and twelve hymns.”
“But there were others. When Phillips went to college there were some two
hundred that he could repeat. They constituted part of his religious furniture,
or the soil whence grew much that cannot now be traced. He never forgot them.”
Again his biographer remarks: “These hymns Phillips carried in his mind as so
much mental and spiritual furniture, or as germs of thought; they often
reappeared in his sermons, as he became aware of some deeper meaning in the old
familiar lines.” Once more the biographer recurs to the subject; this time to
speak of “the language of sacred hymns learned in childhood and forever ringing
in his ears,” as one of the channels through which “he had felt the touch of
Christ.”

Some Points for Discussion

(1) Bishop Brooks’s
biographer says of this carol: “It is an exquisitely simple thing, and yet one
feels “behind the words the existence of a great soul, meditating on the mystery
of the divine revelation.” Is this a true characterization? He suggests further
that “It has also a theological significance—the adjustment between the natural
order and the divine revelation.”

The Omitted Verse

Where children
pure and happy
Pray to the Blessed Child
Where misery cries out to TheeSon of the Undefiled
Where Charity stands watching
And Faith holds wide the door
The dark night wakes the glory hearts
And Christmas comes once more

(2) In the original
manuscript of the carol there was a fourth verse not used in the hymn books. Its
form as first written appears in the facsimile. Mr. Redner writes: “The fourth
line led to some amusing criticism lest it should smack of the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception. Brooks then changed that line to ‘Son of the Mother
mild,’ (and so it appears in the Christmas programme of 1868), but he afterwards
decided to omit the fourth verse altogether from the carol.” Is it worth while
to restore the omitted verse?

(3) The form of the
carol is somewhat unusual for a hymn. It is not (until the last verse) an
offering of direct praise or prayer to God, but is rather a meditation in which
the singer addresses the little town itself. Some hymnologists on that account
question the propriety of giving it a place among the hymns of the Church. Is
the carol really wanting in the form proper for a hymn? and if so, how far is
its defect overcome by deeper qualities that mark it as a hymn rather than a
ballad?

(4) The irregularities
of the metre offer an interesting study. The general scheme is that called
“common metre,” a line of four accents alternating with one of three. This was
the usual metre of the old English ballads; and it looks as though Mr. Brooks
had been studying the balladists, who had a way of dropping out an accented
syllable here and there, and of breaking an occasional line into two by putting
an additional rhyme into the middle of it. Do not these irregularities add to
the charm?

(5) What is the
meaning of the lines

“The hopes and
fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night”?

Editor's Note

The "omitted verse" mentioned by Rev. Benson, above, occurs in The
English Hymnal (1906), Songs of Praise (1925), and The Oxford Book
of Carols (1928), with the amended fourth line. Percy Dearmer and Ralph
Vaughan Williams were principal editors, among others, in all three volumes.

Concerning this carol, Letters of Travel by Phillips Brooks contained
a letter from Rev. Brooks to his father dated Saturday, December 30, 1865, which
states:

My energetic letter-writing has paused for a week. It take it up again to
tell you of my tours around Jerusalem. Last Sunday morning we attended
service in the English church, and after an early dinner took our horses and
rode to Bethlehem. It was only about two hours when we came to the town,
situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced
gardens. It is a good-looking town, better built than any other we have seen
in Palestine. The great church of the Nativity is its most prominent object;
it is shared by the Greeks, Latins, and Armenians, and each church has a
convent attached to it. We were hospitably received in the Greek convent,
and furnished with a room. Before dark, we rode out of town to the field
where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground
with a cave in it (all the Holy Places are caves here), in which, strangely
enough, they put the shepherds. The story is absurd, but somewhere in those
fields we rode through the shepherds must have been, and in the same fields
the story of Ruth and Boaz must belong. As we passed, the shepherds were
still "keeping watch over their flocks," or leading them home to fold. We
returned to the convent and waited for the service, which began about ten
o'clock and lasted until three (Christmas). It was the old story of a Romish
service, with all its mummery, and tired us out. They wound up with a wax
baby, carried in procession, and at last laid in the traditional manger, in
a grotto under the church. The most interesting part was the crowd of
pilgrims, with their simple faith and eagerness to share in the ceremonial.
We went to bed very tired.

Christmas morning we rode up to town and went to service. It rained all
that day, and we stayed in the house. The next morning we were off for our
trip to the Jordan.... [pp. 69-70]

This letter contained no further reference to his feelings that Christmas eve
in Bethlehem. However, a letter which he wrote from Rome on February 19, 1866 to
the Sunday-Schools of the Church of the Holy Trinity and Chapel, Philadelphia,
disclosed additional thoughts about that night:

I remember especially on Christmas Eve, when I was standing in the old
church at Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole
church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God,
how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices that I knew well,
telling each other of the "Wonderful Night" of the Saviour's birth, as I
heard them a year before; and I assure you I was glad to shut my ears for a
while and listen to the more familiar strains that came wandering to me
halfway round the world. [pp. 85-6]A

Three years later, it's memory was "still singing in my soul,"B and that
this was the impetus of the the carol. It was written by Rev. Brooks for his
Sunday-school and was sung for the first time at Christmas, 1868, to the music
furnished by Mr. Redner.C

Concerning the carol, biographer Alexander V. G. Allen wrote:

The hymn and its music at once sprang into popularity, and has since
become the property of all the churches, never henceforth to be omitted from
any Sunday-school collection. It appeals to the heart of a child, partly
because it was the outburst of a happy spirit. It could not have been
written but for those months spent in Palestine in 1865-1866, or for the
later musings on the sacred scenes in the life of Jesus. It is an
exquisitely simple thing, and yet one feels behind the words the existence of
a great soul, meditating on the mystery of the divine revelation.D

"O Little Town Of Bethlehem" was not the only collaboration between Bishop Brooks and Mr. Redner.
They also worked together on the carol
Everywhere, Everywhere, Christmas
Tonight. Mr. Redner supported himself as a real estate agent.

Mr. Allen noted that during his 1889 ocean trip to Japan, Rev. Brooks was "in
the happiest of moods" and entered a number of ideas for sermon topics in his
journal, as well as a number of Christmas and Easter carols. He began
Everywhere, Everywhere, Christmas
Tonight, one Easter carol ("Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer!"
— see An Easter Carol) and at least two other
Christmas carols. The first begins with these lines:

I have been unable to locate any additional details about these songs or carols in
the Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks, the Letters of Travel by
Phillips Brooks, or any other source except those noted.

Ron Clancy, author of the
Christmas Classics series of
Christmas carol books,
has now created a number of "The Story Behind The Music" YouTube™ videos recounting the histories of several
Christmas carols. Three were released in late July 2009, including
O Little
Town of Bethlehem.

I do not have any financial or other
relationship with Ron Clancy, The Christmas Classics, or YouTube.

Notes

A. This excerpt is also found in Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks,
Volume Two, p. 49. Return

B. Mr. Allen, in Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks,
does not directly quote Rev. Brooks, but does note, in Vol. 2, page 57, that
this carol "...had been singing in the soul of Phillips Brooks since he was in
Palestine" (and in Vol. 1, p. 581 of the edition of 1900). Return

C. Mr. Allen adds the following note:

"In alluding to
this circumstance, in his reminiscences of Phillips Brooks in Philadelphia, Mr.
Redner writes: 'In the Christmas programme for that year [1868] I found this extra
verse, which was not afterwards published in any of the hymn-books: —

'Where children
pure and happy
Pray to the Blessed Child,
Where misery cries out to Thee
Son of the Mother mild;
Where Charity stands watching
And Faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes the glory hearts
And Christmas comes once more.'"